This Might Break Me Back Into Shape
by nothing-rhymes-with-ianto
Summary: They will always haunt him. The only way to rid himself of them is to remember and relive.


_Written for the "electrocution" square of angst_bingo and the "zealous" square of alphabetasoup_

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"Jack?" Ianto entered Jack's office without knocking. "What are these? They were mislabelled and in the completely wrong section of the archives. I think someone put them there by mistake, because they're completely outdated and no longer of any use."

The box placed on the blotter was plain, dark brown and slightly worn with age, its top scratched with grey bits of dust embedded in the grooves. Jack didn't recognise the box itself, but by Ianto's vague and slightly condescending description, he could assume that whatever was inside was from the beginning of Torchwood Three's incarnation. A bolt of apprehension shot through him even as he watched his hands reaching out to open the box. Ianto was looking at him with a bland expression of only slight interest, the face he generally wore when doing boring archiving work. Jack schooled his features into a more normal position, though fear was clawing at his insides.

His fingers paused on the latch. It was cool, brass-coloured. It reminded him of crank-powered Rift monitors and tormenting smiles. The box opened almost as if it was willing itself to be revealed to him. The brass and wires inside had dulled with time and no longer gleamed malevolently at him. Still, he could not take his eyes off them. The sight of them gripped him round the chest and held him rigid and shaking, just as they had done so many years ago.

"Jack, are you okay? What's happened?"

"Take them away," Jack croaked, hypnotized by the quietly shining metal. "Take them away and destroy them."

"I…okay, Jack." A pale hand reached into Jack's field of vision and closed the box with a precise snap. The grinning metal disappeared into innocuous wood and the wood slid off the desk and disappeared completely. Jack was left blinking painfully down at his blotter.

He lay in his bunker and stared at the ceiling. The parts of his past that he tried so hard to forget always came back to eat away at him, to slowly grind down his stability, his emotional barriers, his confidence. He couldn't sleep with the exhausting, energizing pain his mind was roiling in. With a groan of resignation, he rolled off his little camp bed and emerged from his bunker, barely remembering to stop and put shoes on.

The lower levels of the Hub were damp and cold. Jack hated coming down here, but in times like this he knew the only way to vanquish these sorts of demons was to remember and relive. It was like having a song stuck in your head and having to listen to it in order to vanquish the repetitive verses from your mind.

The door was as plain and nondescript as the wooden box, and held just as much pain. Set into the wall, it was painted to disappear and be invisible to all but those who knew its existence, or the extremely observant. The only indication that a door was there were some tiny hairline cracks in a familiar shape, and a hook where a doorknob might be. Jack reached out shaking hands and yanked on the hook. The secret door creaked open, bits of stone and rust falling at his feet. Turning on the single naked bulb within didn't do much to lighten the dim interior of the room. Jack didn't look around; he knew what the bulky dark shapes around him were, the agony and hurt they held. His attention was taken by a large iron chair, thick and squat, with ankle and wrist cuffs made of thick leather. It stared down at him, dark and imposing. He shook.

Slowly, achingly, he stripped off his clothes down to his trousers and sat down in the hard metal chair. Alone, he could only restrain one hand, strapping it to the arm of the chair as tightly as he could and placing the other one in a similar position on the other arm. Then he pressed his body against the chair, closed his eyes, and fell back into memories.

"You're just so interesting," Emily Holroyd purred as Jack's head lolled on his chest. She turned to her companion. "Isn't he interesting?"

"A lovely little freak." Alice Guppy agreed, putting a finger under Jack's chin to look into his face. He glared helplessly up at her, breathing through the sparking aftershocks of electrocution. Her fingernails cut into his face.

They'd gotten more creative since their first experiments on him. Now they were trying new and more innovative ways to see how much his body could take and to try to figure out why he never died permanently. They seemed to have read up on their history, taking pride in enhancing medieval torture styles with the use of the more modern materials they now had, and the advanced tools that Torchwood provided. The joy they derived from their sadistic treatment of him made Jack sick, but he could do nothing. They would always find him if he ran away, and enduring this pain meant he had a better chance of finding the Doctor.

A wave of electricity hit him again and he whited out. He had no idea how long he screamed, but when he became aware of things other than pain again, Emily and Alice were grinning and out of breath like they'd just had the thrill of a lifetime.

There were plenty more interesting tortures in this dark little room they trapped him in, but they enjoyed watching the electricity arc across the metal of the chair and loop back into Jack's convulsing body. They loved seeing the sweat making the lightning stronger, Jack's muscles straining and twitching from the shock. Despite their obvious entertainment at his pain from other "tests" and tortures, they were always eager to strap him into the chair and put electrodes all over his body.

"Well now, my strange friend," And now Alice smirked at him and caressed his sweating face. "What do you say we test your endurance one more time before you go to bed? Your Doctor isn't going to come for a while yet, I think. Your time with us here is quite valuable. My dear Emily and I are enjoying your company. Aren't we, Emily?"

"Oh, yes. We very much are."

Alice reached her left hand back and Emily took it, stepping up just behind her and rubbing her cheek against Alice's. Alice smirked at Jack and tightened her grip on his face, turning her head to kiss Emily's mouth. For a moment there was no sound but their wet, elated breaths and Jack's rattling agonized ones. Then Alice looped her arms around Emily's waist and guided them both back to the table. Jack stared at them for a moment, a picture of twisted love and sadistically gleeful romance. Then Alice's hand reached out behind her and shoved the lever to maximum and Jack's body arched and twitched and sang with electricity as lightning shot through his veins and sparks sounded in his brain.

There was nothing he could do. He was his own voodoo doll in the hands of the two women. All his knowledge as a Time Agent, as a traveller, as a man from the future could do nothing for him now so far in the past. He knew nothing, and that only proved to make his situation worse. They would never believe him. And that disbelief only helped to feed their addiction to causing him pain. They went to it with vigour and cheer that he'd not even seen during the wars in his own time.

"Bedtime, good sir." Emily mocked him, the malicious little smile on her face making her look like a deranged child.

"Your room is waiting," Alice called from the corner of the room. "I've just prepared it."

'Bedtime' was just another glaring euphemism for their continued torture. Emily drove an awl into his heart and everything dropped into blackness. When he revived, he was chained to the wall in the dank little room, surrounded by the bulky black shapes of his pain. By now he was used to it, but his own screams echoed in his head and his fears and doubts followed them into his dreams.

Jack lurched back to the present, his body covered with sweet, the taste of tears heavy on his lips. He blinked against the dimness of the nightmare room. His nostrils were filled with the scent of fear and urine and leather. His mouth tasted like copper.

He yanked off the leather restraint and stood quickly. Blood rushed to his head and he fought to stay upright, trying not to touch the walls. He spat on the floor. At the doorway he paused and let a full body shudder overtake him, so he was trembling and shaking as he leaned against the stone, his breath coming in frantic little gasps. Then he breathed in deep, the smell of damp moss and stone and seawater filling his lungs, and pushed it all away.

Coming up out of the corridor and into the main Hub, he nearly slammed into Ianto. He flinched back in surprise.

"Where were you, Jack? I checked the CCTV and saw you go downstairs. I was about to come after you."

"It's nothing." Jack shook his head, hoping Ianto couldn't see how pale he was, the sweat drying on his body, his wrinkled clothes.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Jack nodded, growing tired suddenly. He just wanted to sleep. "I will be. It's done now. It'll be fine."

Ianto nodded vaguely and passed him to the archives. Jack sighed and leant against the stone wall. Phantom electricity leapt across his mind and he knew they would never leave him. Alice and Emily were his demons, laughing at him through the centuries, letting him know with big grins on their faces just how awful and weak and how so very very much a freak he really was. He made his way down to his bunker and lay down. The darkness pressed against him like an incorporeal grave, and he accepted it.


End file.
